The Art of Spiritual Peacemaking (Book Excerpt)

“Would you like me to help you?” Those were the words I felt extend from him, and they startled me. What did he mean? What could he help me with? It was as if he immediately knew what I was thinking and as he smiled I realized what he meant. The Art of Spiritual Peacemaking. “Would you like me to help you with it?” he asked again.

I thought that I would have said yes without hesitating. After all, the way I was raised you don’t question such an extraordinary offer of support, especially when it comes from him. Yet, I felt myself hesitate, as if I wasn’t sure what it meant, or what I would be agreeing to.
Luckily, the hesitation passed and I was convinced. “Yes, I do need you to help me.”

Instantly, I felt something happen, as if information was being downloaded into my heart and my mind, information that I would have to access at a later date, regardless of how anxious I was to know what it was. He smiled when it was complete, then said to me: “When I was with my friends, I told them secrets that I couldn’t reveal to the masses. They weren’t ready…but now they are. I told them stories, but now is the time for everything to be revealed. That will be the course we will write together. I say together because it would be impossible for me to do it alone. We need each other in this.”

Thus began a journey of awakening and learning the secrets of enlightenment, lessons that not only changed the lives of the 30,000 people who took the course online, but James’ life as well.

“If I were to choose two or three books that I would take with me on a desert island, this would be one of them,” James said. “The fact that I am credited with writing it, at least partially, says something important. It certainly doesn’t mean that I like reading my own words, but rather, that there is something I find within these words that I have only discovered a handful of other times in my life. What I discovered is the Truth, pure and simple, and that is something to acknowledge and honor, whatever the source.”

James feels that the messages found in the lessons are of universal importance. In it Jeshua offers simple practices for realizing that each one of us is already enlightened. “No change needs to occur in your mind,” he says, “because you have never actually changed from how you were originally created. You were created perfect, and there is nothing you can do to alter that. This is the key to salvation, and to realizing that you are already a Spiritual Peacemaker.”

The book is divided into two sections. The first section shares the original 33 lessons exactly as they were received by James, each one exactly 999 words, while the second offers one lesson for each day of the year. They are all focused on what Jeshua calls “Seeing what is really in front of you, and disregarding what isn’t.” The lesson is simple: Each instant of our lives we have the opportunity to see the Divine, and in doing so, experience it within ourselves. The course focuses on “Seeing what is true…that God’s love is eternal and unalterable. When we learn to see one another in the same way, then we remember who we really are.”